Virgin Earth Read Online Free Page B

rarely came here. The climb was too steep for him and he did not like to be seen riding while his children walked.
    The hedges of the lane which wound to the summit were planted with all the varieties of English roses that Tradescant could find in the neighboring counties: cream, peach, pink, white. Every year he grafted and regrafted new stock on to old stems to try to make a new color, a new shape or a new scent.
    “They tell me this is sweet,” he said, proffering a rose striped white and scarlet. “A Rosamund rose, but with a perfume.”
    His lord bent and sniffed. “How can you breed for scent when you cannot smell them yourself?” he asked.
    John shrugged. “I ask people if they smell good or better than other roses. But it is hard to judge. They always tell me the scent in terms of another scent. And since I have never had a nose which could smell then it’s no help to me. They say ‘lemony’ as if I would know what a lemon smells like. They say ‘honey’ and that is no help either, for I think of one as sour and one as sweet.”
    Robert Cecil nodded. He was not the man to pity a disability. “Well, it smells good to me,” he said. “Could I have great boughs of it by August?”
    John Tradescant hesitated. A less faithful servant would have said “yes” and then disappointed his master at the final moment. A better courtier would have guided him away to something else. John simply shook his head. “I thought you wanted it for today or tomorrow. I cannot give you roses in August, my lord. Nobody can.”
    Cecil turned away and started to limp back to the house. “Come with me,” he said shortly over his sloped shoulder. Tradescant fell in beside him and Cecil leaned on his arm. Tradescant took the burden of that light weight and felt himself soften with pity for the man who had all the responsibility for running three, no, four kingdoms with the new addition of Scotland, and yet none of the real power.
    “It’s for the Spanish,” Cecil told him in an undertone. “This gift that I need. What do people in the country think of the peace with Spain?”
    “They mistrust it, I think,” John said. “We have been at war with Spain for so long, and avoided defeat so narrowly. It’s impossible to think of them as friends the very next day.”
    “I cannot let us stay at war in Europe. We will be ruined if we go on pouring men and gold into the United Provinces, into France. And Spain is no threat anymore. I must have a peace.”
    “As long as they don’t come here,” John said hesitantly. “No one cares what happens in Europe, my lord. Ordinary people care only for their own homes, for their own county. Half the people here at Cheshunt or Waltham Cross care only that there are no Spaniards in Surrey.”
    “No Jesuits,” Cecil said, naming the greatest fear.
    John nodded. “God preserve us. We none of us want to see burnings in the marketplace again.”
    Cecil looked into the face of his gardener. “You’re a good man,” he said shortly. “I learn more from you in a walk from my mount to my orangery than I do from a nation full of spies.”
    The two men paused. The orangery at Theobalds was open at every doorway, the double white-painted doors allowing the warm summer sunshine to flood into the rooms. Tender saplings and whips of oranges, lemons and vines were still kept inside — Tradescant was a notoriously cautious man. But the mature fruit trees were out in the fine weather, housed in great barrels with carrying loops at four points so they could adorn the three central courts of Theobalds in the summer, and bring a touch of the exotic to this most English of palaces. Long before the first hint of frost Tradescant would have them carried back into the orangery and the fires lit in the grates to keep them safe through the English winter.
    “I suppose oranges are not impressive,” he said. “Not to Spaniards who live in orange groves.”
    Cecil was about to agree but he hesitated. “How